Dumbbell vs. Barbells for Military Presses (Video)

The military press is a really great exercise if you want to target your shoulders and triceps. Find out about the dumbbell versus barbells for military presses with help from an experienced fitness professional in this free video clip.

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I'm A.J. Tucker, and we're going to cover dumbbells versus barbells for military press. The military press is a great exercise to target your shoulders and your triceps. I like to use the barbell to add more weight and intensity to my lifts. I like to use the dumbbells to add the freedom and the instability to my lifts to add variation. For the military press I'm going to put my hands slightly wider than shoulder width apart. I'm going to grab the weight, keeping my elbows down. I want my forearms straight up and down perpendicular to the ground, chest out, stomach in, I want to tighten up my entire core. My feet are directly under my hips as I lift the weight, push over the head. I want my head to come forward. I don't want to be able to see the weight, I want my head forward and then I come down to the start position. So the military press with the barbell, I do this from a standing position and I can load more weight than I can with the dumbbells. With the dumbbells I'm going to start out with my hands a little bit wider than I would with the barbell press. I want the weight directly above my elbow joint. Whenever I go up my hands are going to come slightly closer than it would at the top of the lift with the press and I want the weight directly under a joint. Since my arms are straight, the weight is above my shoulders. By using dumbbells, I can't load as much weight on the bar but the instability and the freedom of having two dumbbells instead of one bar, it adds instability to the exercise so it forces me to use my control.